Science Journal of Psychology
ISSN:2276-6278
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Volume 2014, Article ID sjpsych-255, 6 Pages, 2014,
Research Article
FUNDAMENTAL IMPLICATIONS OF SIGMOND FREUD'S DREAM ANALYSIS
Valentine Ehichioya Obinyan
Department of Philosophy, faculty of Arts, NnamdiAzikiweUniversit, Awka. Nigeria.
Email: melton.helin@gmail.com
Accepted 8�� March, 2014
ABSTRACT
For Freud, dreams are fundamentally guardian of sleep, they
extinguish all external and internal stimuli. Essentially, should one
continue to sleep undisturbed, strong negative emotions, forbidden
thoughts and unconscious desires have to be disguised or censored
in some form or another, while confronted by these, the dreamer
would be terrified. Freud believed the dream to be composed of
two parts; the manifest and the latent content although in rare
cases they are indistinguishable. However, latent content is
transformed into manifest content through a process he called
"dream work" which, in four ways, disguises and distorts the latent
thoughts. But how does this account for a subjective personal
unconscious experience? What are dreams? Are they only sexually
meaningful and symbolic as Freud inferred? How substantial is
Freud's principle of dream symbols and possibility of arriving at
the meaning of dreams? Does this theory give any understanding
of the dreamer's subconscious? With the critically analysis method,
the researcher examines the implications of Freud's analysis of
dreams and concludes affirmatively that to say that dreams are
only sexually meaningful and symbolic, is a position of an extreme
reactionist as dreams also have deep psychological,
epistemological and religious significant value to human psycho
understanding.
KEYWORDS: Dream, symbols, Subconscious, Psychoanalysis and
Sex
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The question of the human mind has long been a
controversial issue. In the scope of Western and African
philosophy, the problem surrounds the concept of the mind
with other related issues such as the mind-body relation,
the functions of the mind, the position of the mind and most
importantly, the conscious, unconscious and subconscious
characteristics of the mind.
On the whole, however, from the ancient to contemporary
period, philosophers have conceived and addressed this
issue from different conceptual schemes. Plato, Augustine,
Aquinas and Descartes argued the mind is a separate entity
which can subsist apart from the body. Against this, Hume
and Russell contented with the postulation that the mind is
no other than a series of perceptions which constantly in
sequence follow each other and beyond this, nothing can be
referred to as mind. Others in Omorebge’s (1990) view are
the epiphenominalists who hold strongly that the mind is a
function of the brain or in fact, a by-product of the brain as
smoke is to fire¹(Omorebge, 1990)
In the corpus of such a controversy, it became interesting
when William James noted that the mind is a stream of the
consciousness. In a synthesis of succession and stream of
the consciousness, the question of an acting subject in this
process of psychological experience becomes imperative.
Consequently, to what extent does Sigmund Freud concept
of dreams or unconsciousness answer this aging question?
What are the limitations of this dream theory and how much
does it contribute to the scholarship? These and many other
questions are the basic puzzles forming the onus of this
research. Meanwhile, who is Sigmund Freud?
1.1 Brief Biography of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud was born on May 18��, 1856, at Freiburg in
Moravia, but in 1860, his family moved to Vienna, where he
lived and worked until death. In his school days, his interest
extended to the whole human life and when he entered the
University of Vienna as a medical student, he did not
immediately concentrate on medicine. According to
Stereson (1980), Freud became interested in biology,
however, spent six years researching in psychology in the
laboratory of the great scientist Bruke² (Stereson, 1980)
Sigmund Freud began his researches into the workings of
the human mind in 1881, after a century during which
Europe and America saw the reform of the insane asylum
and an ever-increasing interest in "abnormal" psychological
states, especially the issue of "nervous diseases" (which was
the first phenomenon that Freud studied, examining the
nervous system of fish while gaining his medical degree at
the University of Vienna as noted above). Freud turned to
the issue of psychology after reading in 1884 about Breuer's
treatment of hysteria by hypnosis and after studying under
Charcot at the Sorbonne in 1885.
Nuttin (1962), noted that Freud engaged to a young Jewish
girl, Martha Berney and thus plans for his marriage and
financial constraints eventually forced him out of a scientific
career³(Nuttin,1962). Feud worked as a doctor in the Vienna
general Hospital and later set up a private practice in
nervous disease until his death in 1939.
Freud influenced a great number of thinkers. Although in
Nelson (1957) not all his theories have been accepted by his
most orthodox followers.⁴ However, his essential ideas have
been adopted by psychoanalysts. Freud faced opposition
and even ridicule for many of his ideas until a group of young
doctors began to follow him to Vienna in 1902, leading to
the creation of the Viennese Psycho-Analytic Society and,
then later in 1910, the formation of the International PsychoAnalytic Association. In one sense, Freud’s work wore a
tabooed nature which reflected the unusual quality of his
mind. Freud is still seen more as an irritant than a classic⁵
(Nelson, 1957).
How to Cite this Article: Valentine Ehichioya Obinyan "Fundamental Implications of Sigmond Freud's Dream Analysis" ,Volume 2014, Article ID sjpsych255, 6 Pages, 2014, doi:10.7237/sjpsych/255
Science Journal of Psychology( ISSN:2276-6278)
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2.0 WHAT ARE DREAMS?
observed, were always wishful - notwithstanding the
fact that manifest dreams assume a wide variety of
forms, some of which (e.g. nightmares) appear
anything but wishful. The differences between the
'manifest' and the 'latent' content of dreams led Freud
to infer an intervening process, by means of which the
unconscious wishes could be transformed into
conscious dreams6.(Solms, 2000)
2.1 Conceptual Analysis of Dream in Sigmund Freud.
The problem surrounding unconscious and conscious
experiences has lingered on since the beginning of
epistemological and psychological analysis concerning the
mind. Perhaps, to contribute an answer to the question on
the complexity of the human mind was the interest of
Sigmund Freud who often distinguished his ideas from
medicine and biology. In other to establish a scientific basis
for his theories, Freud often turned to biological models to
enable him underline the empirical basis for what were, by
necessity, subjective interpretations of apparently illogical
and certainly multivalent symbols such as in his analysis of
dreams.
Freud was possibly the first Psychologist to suggest why we
dream. He was mainly concerned with a research technique
known as psychoanalysis, whereby he would listen to
patients talk about experiences and then use them to
diagnose and treat mental illness. Think of your
stereotypical “film” Psychologist, with his patient lying on
the couch. That is Freud’s art. He found that patients
commonly reported dreams during sessions, and hence
decided to use them as a scientific method to evaluate the
mind. He began fully researching dreams towards the end
of the 19th century, and concluded they were the key to
understanding the subconscious – an important concept in
his psychodynamic approach.
Freud maintained the notion that dream fundamentally acts
as the guardian of sleep. A person lies on the bed in a silent
dark room with the curtains drawn, in an attempt to
disconnect from our reality by extinguishing all external
stimuli. The mind during this time, protects the sleeper from
being distracted by reacting to further external stimuli
(noise, temperature, light, the need to urinate, numb
arm/leg, pain, etc) as well as all internal stimuli (emotions,
fears, dissatisfaction, desires, previous day’s activity) by
manufacturing what becomes dreams.
In analyzing internal stimuli, Freud noted that essentially,
for a person to continue to sleep intact there are some potent
negative emotions, forbidden thoughts and unconscious
desires that must be necessarily disguised or censored in
some form or another. Otherwise, confronted by these, the
dreamer would become distressed and would eventually
wake up. Therefore the dream, if understood correctly, could
lead to a greater understanding of the dreamer’s
subconscious.
According to Freud, dreams arise from wishful desires wish
are further played to through what can be termed a movie
screen with many connecting symbols. Like many analysts
of Freud’s, Mark Solms (2000) in his ‘Dreaming in the
Neuropsychological Age’ noted that Freud considered;
…dreams were attempts to fulfill peremptory wishes,
arising during sleep, derived from appetitive
('libidinal') urges. He based this claim on findings
from a purely subjective method: he collected
dreamers' associations to the individual elements of
their dreams and then inferred implicit, underlying
themes from the converging semantic and affective
links. The 'latent' thoughts revealed in this way, Freud
According to ,Freud, it is the insistent return of the repressed
that can explain numerous phenomena that are normally
overlooked: not only our dreams but also what has come to
be called "Freudian slips" (what Freud himself called
"parapraxes"). According to Dino (2013), for Freud, there is
a "psychology of errors"; that slip of the tongue or that slip
of the pen, "which have been put aside by the other sciences
as being too unimportant"⁷, become for Freud the clues to
the secret functioning of the unconscious. Indeed, he likens
his endeavor to "a detective engaged in tracing a
murder"⁸(Dino, 2013). The mentally unwell add to these
clues numerous other obsessions and mental symptoms as
contained in his module on repression.
In crystallizing this dynamics, Freud proposed a depthmodel for the functioning of the mind, a model now so much
a part of culture that it is difficult to appreciate just how
transformative this new way of thinking about the subject
really was for the development of civilization as a whole⁹
(Dino, 2013).
Freud's model was also important because it argued that the
difference between the sane and the ill is only a matter of
degree. He affirmed:
"if you take up a theoretical point of view..., you may
quite well say that we are all ill—if you look at the
matter from a theoretical point of view and ignore this
question of degree you can very well say that we are
all ill, that is, neurotic—since the preconditions for
the formation of symptoms can also be observed in
normal people"¹⁰ (Dino, 2013).
2.1.1 Tripartite Version of Freud's Depth Model
Freud began with the division conscious/unconscious, to
which he also sometimes added the term, "preconscious";
he soon turned, however, to a tripartite version of that depth
model (it is worth noting that for a time psychoanalysis was
referred to as "depth-psychology")
According to Freud, the id is the great reservoir of the libido,
from which the ego seeks to distinguish itself through
various mechanisms of repression. Because of that
repression, the id seeks alternative expression for those
impulses that we consider evil or excessively sexual,
impulses that we often felt as perfectly natural at an earlier
or archaic stage and have since repressed. These repressed
memories are often translated, according to Freud, into
"screen-memories" that the ego is then able to remember.
Again according to Dino (2013), Freud put this rightly thus:
"the ego has the task of bringing the influence of the
external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies,
and endeavours to substitute the reality-principle for
How to Cite this Article: Valentine Ehichioya Obinyan "Fundamental Implications of Sigmond Freud's Dream Analysis" ,Volume 2014, Article ID sjpsych255, 6 Pages, 2014, doi:10.7237/sjpsych/255
page 3
the pleasure-principle which reigns supreme in the id"
("Ego and the Id")¹¹. (Dino, 2013)
Science Journal of Psychology( ISSN:2276-6278)
dream image or event. Thus the meaning of this dream
imagery may not be apparent or obvious.
Therefore, while the ego is oriented towards perceptions in
the real world, the id is oriented towards internal instincts;
whereas the ego is associated with reason and sanity, the id
belongs to the passions. The ego, however, is never able fully
to distinguish itself from the id, of which the ego is, in fact,
a part, which is why in his pictorial representation of the
mind Freud does not provide a hard separation between the
ego and the id. The superego arises as a resolution to the
Oedipus complex and represents the internalization of one's
father and his prohibitions-and therefore manifests itself as
conscience and a sense of guilt.
5. Rationalization
2.1.2 Basic Apparatus of Sigmund Freud Dream Analysis
It should be noted that Freud is particularly preoccupied
with sexual content in dreams. He believes that sex is the
root cause of what occurs in your dreams. According to
Freud, every long slender or elongated object (i.e. knife,
cigar, gun, etc) represents the phallus, while any cavity or
receptacle (bowl, cave, tunnel, etc) denotes the female
genitalia.
According to Freud, dreams always have two contents these
are the manifest and latent content. The manifest content
is what the dream seems to be saying. It is often bizarre and
nonsensical. The latent content is what the dream is really
trying to say. Dreams give us a look into our unconscious.
Freud believes that we can chip through the dream's
manifest content to reveal the underlying significance and
it's latent by utilizing the technique of "free association".
Using this technique, you start with one dream symbol and
then follow with what automatically comes to your mind
first. You continue in this manner and see where it leads.
To further help in interpreting the cryptic images of our
dreams, Freud classified the images into the following five
processes:
1. Displacement
This occurs when the desire for one thing or person is
symbolized by something or someone else. Thus instead of
directing the emotion or desire toward the intended person
or object it is transferred onto a meaningless / unrelated
object in the manifest dream.
2. Projection
This happens when the dreamer propels their own desires
and wants onto another person. It can also be described as
association or symbol transfer.
3. Symbolization
This is characterized when the dreamer's repressed urges
or suppressed desires are acted out metaphorically.
Symbolization in Freud's view is the conversion of complex
or vague concepts to a dream image. For this, the mind may
use the image of a similar sounding easily identifiable word
instead or use a similar looking less intrusive object. Dream
symbols are for the most part sexual in meaning, thus many
dreams (but not all) have a sexual correlation.
4. Condensation
Freud described this as two or more latent thoughts are
combined to make up one manifest dream image or
situation. In this is process the dreamer hides their feelings
or urges by contracting it or underplaying it into a brief
This is regarded as the final stage of dream work. The
dreaming mind organizes an incoherent dream into one that
is more comprehensible and logical. This is also known as
secondary revision. According to Freud, this is where the
dream loses 'the appearance of absurdity and incoherence.'
In essence, secondary revision can be thought of as the ways
in which the dream work covers up the contradiction and
attempts to restructure the dream into a pattern in
conformity with the dreamer's experience of everyday life.
These further propelled what we can call theory of symbols
in Freud's dream process.
2.1.3 Symbology of Dreams in Sigmund Freud
Freud derived dream symbols from the resistance of dream
interpretation. He noticed that resistance regularly occurred
with certain elements of dreams even in dreams of mentally
healthy people. He claimed that formation of visual answer
on stimulus (dream) is not coincidental. He figured out that
some parts of manifest content typically correspond with
certain latent content. Freud called these manifest elements
symbols - to which he ascribed constant meaning. The dream
symbols are in his opinion more or less sexual.
Number three has in dreams symbolic meaning of man's
sexual organ. All dream ideas which consist of three parts
can mean the man's sexual organ. Phallus is symbolically
substituted with all things that are similar to it by their form,
namely long things that jut out: mountains, rocks, sticks,
umbrellas, poles, trees... Then objects for which the
penetration in the body and harming is characteristic weapons: knifes, daggers, lances, sabres, swords... and fire
arms: guns, rifles, revolvers, cannons... Obviously, the phallus
is also substituted with objects from which water runs:
pipes, watering-pots, fountains... and with objects that can
be lengthened: hanging lights, extensible pens, aerials...
Balloons, airplanes, helicopters, rockets, etc. are symbols of
erection. Less evident male sexual symbols are reptiles and
fish, especially a symbol of snake. A hat and a coat as well as
various machines and appliances have the same meaning.
Female genitalia are symbolically represented with hollow
objects that can contain things: shafts, pits and caves, vessels
and bottles, boxes, suitcases, tins, pockets, closets, stoves,
ships... The same holds for house with entrances, passages
and doors, churches, chapels, castles, mansions, fortresses
and even landscape itself. The material such as wood and
paper as well as objects made of them: a table, a book...
symbolize the same. Typical female symbols among animals
How to Cite this Article: Valentine Ehichioya Obinyan "Fundamental Implications of Sigmond Freud's Dream Analysis" ,Volume 2014, Article ID sjpsych255, 6 Pages, 2014, doi:10.7237/sjpsych/255
Science Journal of Psychology( ISSN:2276-6278)
are snails and mussels and their shells. Apples, peaches and
fruits in general symbolize breasts.
All kind of playing (playing instruments also), sliding,
slipping and breaking branches are symbols of, masturbation.
The teeth falling out and extraction of them are symbols of
castration as a punishment for masturbating (castration's
complex).
Various rhythmical activities such as dance, riding, raising
and threatening with weapon symbolize sexual intercourse
itself. Typical activities that symbolize sexual intercourse are
also climbing and going down the ladder or stairs and
running inside a house. The queen and king or empress and
emperor and similar relations symbolize parents. The fall
into water or rising out of it symbolizes birth.
According to Max Solm, (2000), Freud further noted that;
This intervening process was the so-called dreamwork, which involved mechanisms such as
‘displacement’ (substituting representational elements
for one another, e.g. your father is represented as a
policeman), ‘condensation’ (combining multiple
elements into composite hybrids, e.g. ambition,
excitement and anxiety are all represented by a single
image of an ascending escalator) and ‘regression’
(converting thoughts into perceptions, e.g. a person’s
importance is represented by their size)¹².(Solm, 2000)
2.1.4 Five Stages of Personality Development as Dream
Determinants:
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Third stage- Phallic Stage
Between the ages of 3 to 5, the child becomes aware of male
and female. Personality is fully developed by this stage. This
stage is also classified by the Oedipus and Electra Complexes.
The Oedipus represents a male child's love for his mother
and the fear/jealousy towards his father. The Electra is the
female version where the female child has anger toward her
mother and exhibits "penis envy".
Fourth stage- Latency Period
At the stage, there is little new development observable.
Fifth stage- Genital
This begins from age 12 to the peak of puberty, this stage is
classified by the reawakening of sexual interest.
It is pertinent to reminisce as pointed above that Freud
believes that the motivating force of a dream is wish
fulfillment. Issues of power, lack of control, or unsatisfactory
love may manifest in dreams as a way of satisfying these
needs. Thoughts that are repressed during the day may also
find a way into your dream as a way to getting fulfillment.
Freud believes that every imagery and symbol that appears
in a dream have a sexual connotation. For example, anxiety
dreams are seen as a sign of repressed sexual impulses.
3.0 SIGMUND FREUD'SCONCEPT OF DREAMS: ANY
VITALITY?
3.1.0 Critique of Sigmund Freud's Concept of Dreams
Freud believes that there are 5 stages in the formation of
personality and to a large extent play an important role in
the determination of dreams. These stages are:
a.
Oral/Dependency
b. Anal/ Potty Training
c.
Phallic Stage
d. Latency Period
e. Genital
Despite the widely-recognized failure of Freudian
psychotherapy to heal disturbed people effectively and the
rejection of many of his major theories Freud remains one of
the most influential figures of the 20th century. Freud's basic
insight that our minds preserve memories and emotions
which are not always consciously available to us has
transformed the way humanity views itself ever since. Freud
said that there had been three great humiliations in human
history: Galileo's discovery that we were not the center of
the universe, Darwin's discovery that we were not the crown
of creation, and his own discovery that we are not in control
of our own minds. However, we can arraign him for certain
fundamental lacunars.
First stage- Oral/Dependency
3.1.1 Implications of Sigmund Freud's Concept of Dream
This stage takes place from birth to age 2, where the child
explores the world using their mouth. If needs are not
satisfied during this stage, one goes through life trying
to meet them. Smoking, eating and drinking are seen as oral
fixations. Recurring dreams, the feeling of incompleteness or
unmet needs are common themes.
Second stage- Anal/ Potty Training
In this second stage, the child learns to control their bodily
functions. If not handled properly or if the child is
traumatized at this stage, then he or she might become anal
retentive, controlling, or rigid. The child can also develop
obsessive compulsive behaviors. Dreams of being out of
control or trying to keep things in order are common.
3.1.1.1 Epistemological Implication
The scope of epistemology struggles within one dynamic
issue, namely 'how do we derive knowledge?' Many
philosophers representing different schools had proposed
various arguments in support of the empiricism or
rationalism the rest of the onus of that argument is an
epistemological presupposition. Freud has successfully
intimated us with the fact that dreams solely sense
perceptory derivative. Thus how do we account for dreaming
of a flying horse, a water bed, walking or running in the air
and many other apriori experiences? However, bearing in
mind the Kantian mediation and its vitology to
epistemological enquire, Freud conclusion cannot be
considered holistic because the scope of human history has
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shown that the mind is not tabular rasa as no one has ever
been able to account for the first cry of a baby, nor the reason
a baby sleeps and smile. If it is true a baby dreams, where
dose he/she get this dreams and when was this action
displayed in his /her dream movie suppressed or has the
child undergone a personality development to become a
baby?
From his dream theory, it is very obvious that Freud moves
from the known to the unknown.
3.1.1.2 Psychological Implication
No doubt, in the scope of Psychology and epistemology the
method or tendency of tracing problems to human
development in early childhood traumas or other repressed
emotions begins with Freud. One of Freud's most important
discoveries is that emotions buried in the unconscious
surface in disguised form during dreaming and that the
remembered fragments of dreams can help uncover the
buried feelings. Whether the mechanism is exactly as Freud
describes it, many people have derived insights into
themselves from studying their dreams, and most people
consider dreams emotionally significant, unlike our
ancestors who often saw them either as divine portents or
as the bizarre side-effects of indigestion. Freud argues that
dreams are wish-fulfillments, and will ultimately argue that
those wishes are the result of repressed or frustrated sexual
desires. The anxiety surrounding these desires turns some
dreams into nightmares.
From the above analysis, we can deduce that Freud believes
that no human action is occasioned by chance; all human
actions and thought are motivated by an unconscious at
some level. In order to live in a civilized society, you have a
tendency to hold back our urges and repress our impulses.
However, these urges and impulses must be released in
some way; they have a way of coming to the surface in
disguised forms.
Consequently according to the Freud, one way these urges
and impulses are released is through your dreams where
‘internal stimuli’ is transforming into a visual fantasy –
allowing the dreamer to satisfy his or her desire. Because
the content of the unconscious may be extremely disturbing
or harmful, Freud believes that the unconscious expresses
itself in a symbolic language. Freud categorizes aspects of
the mind into three parts: Id - centered on primal impulses,
pleasures, desires, unchecked urges and wish
fulfillment. Ego - concerned with the conscious, the rational,
the moral and the self-aware aspect of the mind. Superego the censor for the id, which is also responsible for enforcing
the moral codes of the ego.
Hence when a person is awake, the impulses and desires of
the id are suppressed by the superego. Through dreams, you
are able to get a glimpse into your unconscious or the id.
Because your guards are down during the dream state, your
unconscious has the opportunity to act out and express the
hidden desires of the id. However, the desires of the id can,
at times, be so disturbing and even psychologically harmful
that a "censor" comes into play and translates the id's
disturbing content into a more acceptable symbolic form.
This helps to preserve sleep and prevent you from waking
Science Journal of Psychology( ISSN:2276-6278)
up shocked at the images. As a result, confusing and cryptic
dream images occur.
We can notice clearly the semantic diffusion as well as the
conceptual disagreement surrounding dream. Hence some
psychologists have argued that we might have gotten at the
understanding of the concealed meaning of dreams by the
shortest path if we had simply followed common ways of
speaking. When the questions of scientificality and that of
the possibility of private languages are asked with reference
to dreams, the puzzle becomes massive. Proverbs indeed
sometimes speak dismissively of dreams; people think they
are being properly scientific when they say, "Dreams are
froth." But in common usage dreams are predominantly the
fulfillers of dreams. We cry out, delighted, "I would never
have imagined such a thing even in my wildest dreams"
when we find that reality has surpassed our expectations.
From these aforementioned, Freud has crystallized the
fundamental reality of the mind as an aspect of the human
person. It is complex and performs numerous functions.
Following from this, can we not conclude that dream is just
one of the numerous functions of the mind and if yes, why
does Freud categorically sexualize the human person when
there are other realities or complexities that structures his
personality and thought pattern far from repression and
depression or suppressions that makes him/her neurotic?
According to Freud, the reason you struggle to remember
dreams, is because the superego is at work. It is doing its job
by protecting the conscious mind from the disturbing images
and desires conjured by the unconscious.
There are many critics on Freud's theory of dreams. We can
observe that Freud lived in a sexually repressed Victorian
era. His preoccupation with sexual imagery may therefore
have been a product of the times, the culture or his own
relationship/conflict with sex. On a larger scale therefore,
putting together his dream theory and the effect of
personality on human behavior and dreams we can conclude
that to say that Freud has a personality defect is an
imperative.
3.1.1.3 Religious Implication
Freud interprets dreams in a very unique way. He pays
attention to the reports of his patients, asks some basic
questions, analyzes the symbols and compares them with
the history of the patient’s personality development from
child hood. Thus he concludes that his/her dreams are
results of wishful desires arising from suppressed actions
primarily sexual desires. This to a large extent totally
disagrees with the religious symbolic significance of dreams
as a means towards receiving clear visions. Okeke’s (2002)
analysis, dreams in religion are considered as one of those
means, forms and components of religious expressions¹³
(Okeke, 2002).
Religion is fundamentally man’s attempt to explain to
himself the meaning and purpose of his own existence by
reference to the purpose of creation, in his attempt he makes
use of metaphor, symbols, and imaginative parables. Are
these religious expressions at any time the repressed desires
of man in the early stages of his personality development
when all repression is only sexually expressed?
How to Cite this Article: Valentine Ehichioya Obinyan "Fundamental Implications of Sigmond Freud's Dream Analysis" ,Volume 2014, Article ID sjpsych255, 6 Pages, 2014, doi:10.7237/sjpsych/255
Science Journal of Psychology( ISSN:2276-6278)
It can therefore be noted that dreams symbols refers priori
and aposteriori concrete human existential experience
especially religious experience and thus they cannot be
interpreted solely sexually. Or could the Holy bible be
informed from a repressed sexual desire? How do we
interpret with the Freudian dream theory the dream of a
man celebrating the holy mass or parading a military
battalion? There are in fact a million kinds of dreams and
not all dreams are sexual repressed expressions.
Although the fact that Freud is a strong anti-religionist or an
atheist, it is an imperative for such analysis of dreams that
cuts out religious significance. Like Nietzsche, Freud will not
agree to societal laws or the concept of good or bad not even
to virtues as they affect human behavior and make him
neurotic. However, following from his humble submission,
that there had been three great humiliations in human
history: Galileo's discovery that we were not the center of
the universe, Darwin's discovery that we were not the crown
of creation, and his own discovery that we are not in control
of our own minds, we can possibly include another by adding
that sexually wishful repressed desires are not the onus or
substance of our dreams and they are not the only platform
upon which any understanding or interpretation of dreams
can be based as some theological or religious analysis has
shown that the God also uses the human mind through its
dream function to pass messages that informs or sharpen
an understanding of the process of human existence that is,
dreams significantly open to us some unknown and
unimaginable truth which are confirmed in real life
situations.
4.0 CONCLUSION
From the afore mentioned, dreams are not comparable to
the spontaneous sounds made by a musical instrument
struck rather by some external force than by the hand of a
performer; they are not meaningless, not absurd, they do
not imply that one portion of our stockpile of ideas sleeps
while another begins to awaken. They are a completely valid
psychological phenomenon, specifically the fulfillment of
wishes; they can be classified in the continuity of
comprehensible waking mental states; they are constructed
through highly complicated intellectual activity.
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questions aside for the moment and follow one particular
path further is indeed a dream waiting to be fulfilled. We
have learned that a dream represents a fulfilled wish
according to Freud's analysis.
Our next concern will be to discover whether this is a
universal characteristic of dreams. . . We must leave open
the possibility that the meaning may not be the same in
every dream. One dream can be a wish fulfillment; but
perhaps another might just prove to be a fulfilled fear; a third
might contain a reflex; while a fourth may simply reproduce
a memory. Can there possibly be other wish-dreams? Or
perhaps is there nothing but wish-dreams, Mr. Freud?
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However, as soon as we delight in this discovery, a flood of
questions assails us. If, according to dream analysis, the
dream represents a fulfilled wish, what creates the
astonishing and strange form in which this wish-fulfillment
is expressed? What transformation have the dream thoughts
undergone to shape the manifest dream which we remember
when awake? Through what means has this transformation
taken place? What is the source of the material which has
been reworked into the dream? Where do the many
peculiarities which we notice in dream thoughts come from,
for instance that they may be mutually contradictory? Can
a dream tell us something new about our inner psychological
processes? Can its content correct the opinions that we have
held during our waking hours? What is the fundamental
quality of dreams in the Freudian analysis and the question
of human knowledge in the scope of epistemology?
The whole corpus of philosophy is an open ended continuous
analysis of facts, questions, concepts, or phenomena. To even
consider that philosophy as well as philosophers can put
How to Cite this Article: Valentine Ehichioya Obinyan "Fundamental Implications of Sigmond Freud's Dream Analysis" ,Volume 2014, Article ID sjpsych255, 6 Pages, 2014, doi:10.7237/sjpsych/255